THE VOYAGES OF THE ZENI.* THE story of the Zeni
has been regarded for centuries as one of the strangest problems of literature, and it is likely that the controversy will still rage, though some of the worst difficulties have been explained by Mr. Lucas in the fine volume before us. The question is whether the travellers explored the seas between this country and Iceland ; no one, we presume, will now believe that they travelled among the Norsemen in Greenland, or had any special information about America. Mr. Lucas has concluded that the whole narrative was a literary imposture. Many others have thought that there was a basis of fact under a huge superstructure of romance. The compiler may have obscured the truth by taking too much pains about its illustration. He certainly copied many of his details from well-known books; and Mr. Lucas has shown that his map was a hopeless patchwork.
Three brothers, of the great family of the Zeni, are known to have lived at Venice towards the end of the fourteenth century. They were sons of Pietro Zeno, surnamed the Dragon, who was Captain-General of the Christian League against the Turks. His son, the Chevalier Nicolo, commanded the trading-galleys sent to visit Middelburg, and Southamp- ton also, if practicable, on January 22nd, 1385. Antonio, the next brother, is said to have joined Nicoll) in his adventures among the islands of the North Seas. Carlo, the third brother, remained at home. He was Captain-General against the Genoese in 1380; he lived till 1418, and is supposed to have transmitted to his descendants the story of his brothers' discoveries.
Nicolo, according to the family tradition, set out in 1380, on a ship of his own, to visit England and Flanders; but this date, in any case, is admitted to be too early. He was ship- wrecked on the " Island Frislanda," and was taken into the service of a certain Prince " Zichmni," or " Zicno," who was endeavouring to capture the country from the King of Norway. There is a dispute about the name of the island. Some think it was the whole group of Faroes, which were sometimes mentioned as a single island. This view is to some extent supported by the local names in the narratives. Mr. Lucas, however, believes the whole story to be a late fabrication, and suggests that the Zeni went no further than the Continental province of Friesland. Antonio, it was said, joined his brother, and took part with him in an attack on " Estland," evidently intended for the Mainland of Shetland. Nicoll) was left in charge of the smaller islands, and after-
• The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Nicole and Antonio Zeno in the North Atlantic about the End of the Fourteenth Century, and the Claim Founded thereon to a Venetian Discovery of America a Criticism and an indictment By Fred. W. Lucas. Illustrated by Facailnil(r. London : Henry Stevens, Son, and
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wards made a voyage to the North, and visited " Engrove- land." This seems to be meant for Greenland, though the volcanic phenomena, described in a very grotesque fashion must certainly be regarded as Icelandic. We are told, later on, how Zichmni and Antonio came to the island of Icaria, and how the King's interpreter traced its name from the legend of Daedalus. Mr. Lucas shows how easily this might have been taken from Bordone's description of "Icaria" in the . Greek Archipelago, and treats the story as an impudent fabrication. Mr. J. R. Forster, Captain Cook's friend, took "Icaria" to be a misreading for Kerry, and his solution was accepted by Mr. R. H. Major in his Voyages of the Zeni. A more important embellishment was con- tained in the Story of the Fisherman. Certain Frieslanders, caught in a tempest, were carried westwards a thousand miles, and discovered the Isle of Estotiland, which has been at various times identified with Labrador, Newfoundland, and other regions in their neighbourhood. It was said to be rich in gold and other minerals. " In the midst of it," said the fisherman, "there is a very high mountain, where four rivers rise that water the whole country." There was a trade with Greenland, where the islanders bought furs, sulphur, and pitch. They seemed to have had some inter- course with Europe, since there were Latin books in the King's library, which the people could no longer understand. It is hardly possible to trace all the sources of this singular fable. Some of the details suggest a connection with old descriptions of the North of Europe ; but Mr. Lucas has shown that most of the story was copied from the Spanish accounts of the West Indies and Mexico. The fabulous country was generally regarded as lying north of Labrador ; and Milton, we may remember, makes reference in " Paradise Lost " to the snows of the " cold Estotiland." The fisherman described another country called Drogio, ex- tending far to the south-west, inhabited in some parts by naked hunters, and in others by cannibals, who had great temples in which men were sacrificed to idols. Here again the narrator may have thought of the man- eating giants of Northern legend, whose existence was gravely recorded by Giovio in his Description of Britain; but many of the incidents, as Mr. Lucas has shown, are derived from the earliest notices of South America.
It was not till 1558 that Nicolo Zeno the younger, fifth in descent from Antonio the traveller, published a narrative of his forefathers' adventures. He added a map, which has made the confusion worse confounded, based, as he alleged, upon an old chart which had been preserved among the antiquities of the House. It occurred to him to make a copy, apparently with many modern alterations, " which," he says, " although it is all rotten and many years old, I have suc- ceeded in doing tolerably well." This Nicolb Zeno was a scholar, according to Ruscetti and Molietti, who admitted his revised copy into their new editions of Ptolemy. It is certain that he was well acquainted with the works of Claus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, at that time the best authority on every subject relating to the North. The compiler bor- rowed a good many stories from Olaus, though he managed to disfigure them almost beyond recognition. His chart corresponds in the main with the Archbishop's map of 1539, which differs from those prefixed to the editions of his " History " produced in 1555 and 1567. The contents of the first document were stated in a preface to the "History "; bat no copy was known in modern times till Dr. Oscar Bremmer found an example in the Public Library at Munich. Mr. Lucas exhibits a portion of it, in reduced facsimile, and shows that it must be regarded as the touch-stone of the whole " Zenian controversy."
The compiler placed his "Icaria" on the spot where the Archbishop set the island of " described by him in a note as being the residence of the Lord of the Orkneys, with two fine castles, and a population of thirty thousand contented inhabitants. There was evidently some confusion between the Viceroy of Iceland and the Earl of Orkney, and their respective places of residence. " Tile " may have been meant to show the " Thule " mentioned by Tacitus. It has been accepted at various times as a duplicated figure of Shetland, as May set in a wrong place, and as the isle of Lewis. Mr.
Lucas thinks that it may turn out to be meant for the little island of St. Kilda ; bat the matter must, for the present, remain uncertain. Nicolb's book and map of 1558 contradicted the current notions of geography ; but we must remember that he was a learned man, a patrician of Venice, and a member of the Council of Ten. The newer maps were printed side by side with his specimen of archeology: and as Molietti pointed out, no sooner did his work appear than evidence began to be received in its favour. Perhaps "Mercator" and Ortelins should be blamed for keeping up the imposture; but they had to satisfy a public that might have resented its omission. In Horn's Area Noe, of 1666, containing a clever description of the native Americans in the manner of Tacitus, the Zeni legend was dismissed as a tissue of lies ; and the learned John Ogilby, in our own country, treated the tradition with similar contempt. The principal authorities on the whole subject have been collected by Mr. Lucas in a valuable appendix.
When the work appeared the Venetians were pleased to hear of discoveries anticipating the glories of Cabot, and to extol with the compiler "the high courage and great energy" of their forefathers. The interest in the problem revived from time to time as topics connected with it became fashion. able. When Spain was at the zenith of her power, the English had to collect evidence in support of their American title. Frobisher was accordingly sent out to find and occupy " Estotiland "; and Dr. Dee showed the Queen how King Arthur had conquered the countries visited by the Italian adventurers. Another point of interest appeared when the Danes set up a colony in Greenland, and the remains of the old Norse settlements were discovered. The tradition thus gained a place in the debate about "pre-Colombian" voyages to America. Mr. Major contended that the " Zeno docu- ment" was the latest writing that described the lost settle. ments and the survival of the Norsemen in Labrador. He was inclined to find the Zeni's volcanoes near certain hot springs in Greenland, but this theory was afterwards abandoned. The maps and woodcuts of Olaus Magnus show that the story related to Mount Heck and its neighbours, with special reference, it may be supposed, to a celebrated eruption in 1389.
The compilation was said to have been made up from letters received by Carlo Zeno. One of them had referred to a volume recording the laws of Estotiland and Drogio, with an account of Zichmni and the city which he founded in Greenland. But the volume and letters had perished in a singular way : "be- cause," said the compiler, being still a boy when they came into my hands, and not understanding what they were, I tore them in pieces and destroyed them, as boys will do." The first letter dealt with the shipwreck and the war in Friesland. Mr. Lucas shows the difficulty of identifying Zichmni with Henry Sinclair, who held the earldom of Orkney and Shetland, and afterwards the duchy of Oldenburg, as vassal of the Crow/ of Norway. Mr. Major was led to this view by a slight similarity of names. Mr. Lucas suggests that if the voyage occurred, Zichmni might be meant for Wichmann the pirate, who was scouring the North Sea about that time. A letter from Antonio described the fighting in seven islands of the Shetland group. The map, however, transfers them to the north-east of Iceland, and Mr. Lucas ingeniously argues that the compiler was deceived by the appearance of the ice- floes in that quarter, indicated in the Archbishop's map of 1539.
Nicolb Zeno was said to have seen a monastery.in Green- land, set at the foot of a burning hill, and supplied with water from the boiling springs ; but this is only a copy of the Icelandic Abbey of Helgafield, of which a woodcut may be found in the Archbishop's history. As Olaus mentioned more than one volcano, we are not surprised to find that Antonio and the Prince paid another visit to the North, where their soldiers found "a great fire in the bottom of a hill, and a spring casting out a stuff like pitch, which ran down to the sea."
We have not space to discuss the details of the argument ; but we have said enough to show that Mr. Lucas makes out an extremely strong case in support of his contention. The main conclusions are summed up with learning and ability, and the reader is helped to form his own judgment by a copious store of rare maps in facsimile. The author's sum- mary is too long to be quoted ; but we may notice among its principal conclusions that in the author's opinion, Zeno's map of Friesland was compounded of earlier maps of Iceland and the Faroes, and that his island, therefore, never existed ; and, in fact, that the whole of his chart was concocted from other maps "of various dates and nationalities "; and that the narrative itself was not compiled from old letters, as falsely stated, but from the published works of Bordone and Olaus Magnus, and other writers mentioned in the argument.
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